Ware Hawk

  Ware Hawk

  A Witch World Book

  Andre Norton

  For Pauline Griffin, whose encouragement

  and suggestions brought this tale into being.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  ESTCARP, the last-held land of the Old Ones in the latter days, was ruled by the Witch Women with the Power that had once been the heritage of all those from whom they had sprung. The land had been caught between two enemies—the new peoples—those of Alizon in the north, and Karsten in the south. To the east lay the mysterious land which, by the Power, was closed to the people of Estcarp, as protection against ancient evil. Then, from the sea in the south, came the Kolder who were rapers of men's minds, who used strange machines to create armies of living dead. Determined to rule the world, they had come through one of the Gates. They hated the Witches mightily, for their minds could not be overborne by the Kolder machines.

  They captured Gorm and the city of the Sulcar sea people who had been long allied with Estcarp. In Karsten they made Duke Yvian one of their mind-dead. So they moved upon Estcarp as though it were a nut to crack between two stones.

  Then, out of another space and time, came Simon Tregarth who swore liege oath to the Witches. With Koris, exiled from Gorm, and the Witch Jaelithe, as well as Loyse of Verlane (axe-wedded to Duke Yvian whom she had never seen), he moved to mighty action, rousing all the land.

  The Kolder were driven back to their Gate, and it was closed by Simon and Jaelithe (who had wed with Simon against all the custom of her people and so lost the Witches’ favor but not her own powers). Then, because Duke Yvian was dead without heirs, there was war in Karsten.

  Before Yvian's death, by the Kolder orders, he had outlawed—or horned—all of the Old Race who lived within the borders of the Duchy of Karsten. There was red massacre and much horror, but some escaped, to flee north to their distant kin in Estcarp. There they became the Borderers under Simon, and, with the Falconers, held the mountain passes.

  Now a “new man,” called Pagar, appeared, and he united the quarreling lords of Karsten by giving them a common goal—the invasion of Estcarp. The Estcarp forces were too few to resist. To save Estcarp, the Witches gathered all their might and, in a single night, struck at the land itself, destroying the mountains, turning and twisting rocks and earth into chaos. This came to be known as the Turning. Many of the Witches died in the backwash of the Power and the few left were reft of much of their strength, but Pagar and his forces were annihilated.

  Jaelithe Tregarth had borne her lord three children at one birth—a thing hitherto unknown. In their childhood she went seeking her lord who had never returned from a scouting trip. The three young Tregarths held fast to each other, though the sister was torn away to be trained by the Witches. It was on the very night of the Turning that her two brothers brought her out of imprisonment. Together they fled east, for the old barrier did not hold against them who were of half blood. So they came into Escore, the forgotten homeland, and there they warred with evil stirred to new life by their coming. To them, little by little, were drawn many of those who had once been of Karsten and then had defended the border, together with their kin and clans—moving into the same country from which their ancestors had fled.

  Karsten, after the death of Pagar and his army in the mountains, was in a chaos of warring lords. The turned and twisted mountains gained an evil reputation and only outlaws sought refuge there. Also, from Escore, now awake and seething with magic, came strange other beings to prowl this new territory.

  Estcarp, exhausted by years of war, first with the Kolder, and then with her neighbors, was under the rule of Koris of Gorm. He was joined in time by Jaelithe and Simon Tregarth, returned through the aid of their children and choosing to defend the west and not the east.

  Alizon, to the north, having been tricked by the Kolder into invading the western continent where lay the dales of High Hallack, was badly defeated there. Now it held an uneasy peace, though there were frequent raids south to test the defenses of Estcarp, and on that border the forces of Koris centered.

  These later years were a time of many perils, of the wandering of masterless men, especially those exiled from Karsten by the Horning. Some settled in Estcarp, though they did not accept that as their true home, others took service wherever they might.

  The grim and deadly race of Falconers, forced to flee their Eyrie in the mountains at the Turning, became marines on Sulcar ships or sought employment where they could, their tight organization scattered. Their once-great hold was a pile of stones. So the years sped and there were no firm roots for most men. Estcarp, under a new type of rule, was unsure of the future.

  1

  THE wind blustered through the gray dawn. There was a crash as one of the slates from the inn roof shattered in the courtyard. Once Romsgarth had been a major town where far-traveling merchants met—the last Estcarpian hold before the overmountain way to Karsten. It was very old and worn, with perhaps a third of the stone-walled, ancient buildings falling in, to become weed-grown rubble. The days of those merchants, with their busy going and coming, were nearly two generations ago, banished now into the past. Karsten—who went to Karsten by mountain roads now? There were no roads since the turnings for the mountains themselves had set up new barriers unknown to any save outlawed men, skulkers and raiders, drawn from afar to seek refuge in holes and dens.

  The pickings hereabout for such outlaws must be scanty. Three years of severe winters would have reduced even the most lawless to a small threat.

  The girl standing by the inn window, holding the edge of a shutter against the push of the wind, looked out upon the not-yet stirring town, the tip of her tongue showing between her lips. This nervous habit, of which she was not aware, betrayed her anxiety, though none now were left to care what troubled Tirtha of Hawkholme.

  There were many roaming along the broken border who, worn by long years of war, sought aimlessly for some refuge or had some business they held secret, lest it be taken from them, as so much else had been. Questions were not asked of travelers in these broken, dying towns. Such life as had returned to Estcarp now lay in the north—in those rich lands once more to be set under plow in a week or two, and in the ports where Sulcar ships nosed in, those hardy traders already seeking their old sea tracks.

  Within this room, where a twisted rag—anchored as a wick in a bowl of oil—gave more smoke than light, hung the sour smell of too many wayfarers, too little pride in the inn, too long a span of years. Time weighed on the cracked walls, made the floor uneven, its thick boards worn by the passing of countless booted feet. Tirtha breathed in deeply of the cleaner air outside, then closed the shutter and slipped the bar into place. She moved swiftly to the uneven-legged table with the lightfootedness of one used to dangerous trails.

  There she sought, for the second time since her awakening, the purse carried within her jerkin, part of the belt clasped about her waist beneath layers of drab clothing. Made of serpent skin, it was supple enough—as well as tough—for her to feel its contents without opening it. There was money there—gathered slowly, painfully. She need only to look at her calloused hands, feel the ache rising from a sudden shift of her thin shoulders to remember how most of it had come into her keeping. There was also a small hoard of ten irregular
discs of gold—so old that all markings had long vanished from their surfaces—the gift of fortune itself. This she had taken as a sign that what she must do had advanced from wishful dreaming to reality.

  She had hacked away a fallen tree to free a path for the plow, thus revealing in the turn of its roots a shattered bowl—and in it—this hidden treasure! Fortune had been with her also that she was alone at its discovery. The surly garthman who had hired her as a harvest hand had seen fit to send her out alone on the roughest job he could find—merely, she believed, to teach her that as a woman she was of little use.

  Once more Tirtha's tongue touched her lips. Service at the hearth or with the wash paddle along a stream-side was not for her. She wore men's clothing; a sword hung at her belt, though its blade had been so nicked and thinned she feared any use of the weapon might break it. On its pommel was still the tracing she treasured—the head of a hawk, its bill a little open as if voicing a cry of defiance. That was all of her heritage unless. . .

  Karsten—Karsten and a dream. Since the Witches of Estcarp had wrought their magic in the Turning, upheaving the mountains and making the land walk and so destroying the invading forces of the Pagar, who had risen to rule in the southern duchy of Karsten, no one knew what lay overmountain in these days.

  The bits and pieces of knowledge Tirtha had gathered so avidly from any wayfarer (and most carefully, lest curiosity be aroused as to why this sun-browned, hard-featured female was interested in anything beyond the earning of her bread) made clear that the duchy had been split into many small holdings often at war with one another. No lord since Pagar had gained power enough to make the broken duchy whole again.

  This present state of Karsten might well serve her purpose in one way, hinder it in another—she had no way yet of knowing. With the discovery of the hoard of gold discs, which she took as an omen, she had come to find out that one did not venture south without a guide. In the rending of the mountains by the Power of the Witches, all landmarks had disappeared and she could not wander alone.

  Hence—the hiring fair.

  Tirtha buckled on her sword belt and swept up a hooded cloak of stout weaving, lined with hareskin—an extravagance to one slim of purse. Yet the garment was a necessary protection against the weather, like the winds that howled outside now, as well as a sleeping nest for the night. There was her shoulder pack also and her bow and quiver of arrows. She had worked a whole season to learn the making of those, practicing thereafter with dogged patience. She had no dart gun. Those were for the wealthy, heads of households and their guards or for the Lord Marshal's own forces, which kept such law as now ran in Estcarp.

  Down in the stable there was a rough-coated but sure-footed mountain mare—used to living off scant grazing—a mount with a rolling eye and a wicked temper. However, that temper was also a good protection against her being stolen. She was as gaunt and ill-looking as her mistress, her rusty black coat matching the short-cropped hair that hung in scallops across Tirtha's forehead.

  With calloused fingers Tirtha pinched the wick of the lamp, before moving noiselessly out into a hall where the stink of too-close living made her nose wrinkle as she descended use-hollowed steps into the common room.

  Early as it was the innkeeper, a woman with a sagging fat belly beneath a sack apron, sleeves rolled up over arms that were thick enough nearly to match Tirtha's thighs, was at the hearthside, a long-handled iron spoon in one hand, the other rolled into a fist which she had just used to cuff a girl who had been watching the pot. A smell of scorching worked its way through the other odors, and Tirtha guessed at the sin of the younger cook.

  Scorched perhaps, but it was food. She had long since learned not to be dainty—if food was hot and filling it would do. Also she had no money to waste by calling for any special dish. She scooped up an empty wooden bowl from the table, picked out a horn spoon, which looked as if it had been at least wiped clean after its last use, and advanced to the scene of conflict.

  The serving wench scuttled away on hands and knees, snuffling, seeking a safe distance from her mistress who was stirring the pot with a vigor that sent bits of its contents slopping over the rim. Now her attention switched from what she was doing to Tirtha.

  “Porridge—you can have a chop of beef—” Her small eyes had already valued and dismissed this visitor as not being worth urging to eat a more varied meal.

  “Porridge,” Tirtha agreed, extending the bowl into which the inn-mistress ladled an even six spoonfuls with the ease of very long practice and an eye for profit.

  The smell rising from it was not only of scorched meal, but musty as well—the end of the winter grinding. No lumps of chopped bacon, not even a shaving of onion, cut the dusty taste. Still it was food—energy to see her through the morning, and she was not about to add to her reckoning. There were supplies that she must buy. Game did exist in the mountains, yes, and she was adept with a snare—not even wasting an arrow unless she had the fortune to meet a pronghorn. Also, she was countrywise, and with the beginning of the growing season, there were a number of newly green sprouts that could be boiled, not only as food, but for their tonic.

  There remained salt and some other things that she must reluctantly lay out money for, and she had the list ready.

  The inn-mistress glanced Tirtha's way now and then, as she methodically emptied her bowl, doubtless ready to answer with a quick tongue any complaint. That this woman was wary of her, Tirtha had known from the beginning. She was neither bird nor hare in this land. A woman who rode as a man might, who had no proper place. She was marked, yes, but there were other strangers, some as odd as she was. If they tattled among themselves about her for the space of a day or so, there would arrive some other to make them wonder and surmise. She had nothing to fear this side of the border. On the other side—well, even her face might condemn her there, if the old stories were true, and she was certain that none of their grimness was the matter of a songsmith's imagining. Her own kind—the Old Race—had been thrice-horned, outlawed, hunted, slain—sometimes horribly—when Duke Yvian had ruled, and those days were still unforgotten.

  Those who had escaped into Estcarp had formed the Borderers, to ride a blood-stained trail back and forth, providing the first wall of protection for the north. Men and women of the Old Race, who had seen their dead, did not forget. The sword at Tirtha's side had been a part of that time, though the fighting was over when she was but a child not as tall as the table at which she now sat. Still, hatred was bred into her. The Old Race was long lived—unless death cut them down prematurely in war—and their memories were even longer.

  Others were stirring in the inn now—tramping down into the common room. There were at least three, who, she decided, were bound for the same place as drew her—the hiring fair held here in the early spring. They were better dressed, fuller of face than she was, as if they did not know the gauntness of late winter. They were garth stewards, perhaps, sent to pick up a herdsman, a dairy maid, even a weaver, if they were lucky.

  Her own seeking was different, and only rumor had brought her here. Though many of those who had served in the wars had been granted lands to the east, and others were still attached to lords to whom they had given shield oaths (and some were outlaws because raid and rapine were all they knew), a trained fighting man down on his luck could still be hired. With the better sort, who still had their pride and kept to the old customs, sword oath might be given in return for hire.

  She needed a man who knew the mountains, was not an outlaw, yet might be a guide into Karsten. For such she was willing to give a good weight of what now lay snug about the upper curve of her hips.

  Tirtha scraped the last unappetizing morsel from her bowl, dropped the licked spoon into it, and rose. The hiring lines would be gathering now where the long-ago guild merchants had had their principal market. With the wind still shrieking, those seeking employment might shelter in the pillared and roofed alcoves, which had held stalls in the old days.

  She fast
ened her cloak throat buckle, jerked the hood well up over her head, and pushed out into the courtyard, to the street beyond. It took only a few moments’ quick walk to reach her goal, but the wind cut and pulled, leaving her gasping when the full strength of it hit against her face. There were few to be seen on the street. It was a foul day, and by a new lowering of clouds overhead, like to be fouler. She turned into the square and saw that she was right—those who waited huddled in the alcoves.

  Each wore in his hat or her hood the small symbol of the trade offered—a whittled staff for a herdsman, a tuft of wool for a shepherd, a miniature paddle for a dairy maid. Tirtha gave only a quick glance as she strode by. Perhaps she faced disappointment—what she sought might no longer be offered.

  It was in the last of the alcoves, as the rain began—carried in fierce lances by the wind—that she saw what she hunted. There was only one. He was alone, as if he were indeed an outlaw—some venturer whom none of these peaceful serving folk wanted a part of, a hawk dropped into a flock of domestic fowl.

  Hawk—

  Tirtha halted, her hand seeking the half-effaced insignia on the pommel of her sword. This one was as out of place as if he had been painted brilliant crimson and hung about with gem chips.

  He leaned against a pillar until he saw her stop. Instantly he straightened, to match her stare for stare—cold-eyed as something that was more of the Dark than the Light. Where she wore leather beneath her cloak, he was mail-shirted, his own cloak cut about at the hem so it came only to his knees, two rents in it badly cobbled together with large stitches. Though he had on a horseman's boots, they were spurless, showing signs of heavy wear. But it was his headgear that left her astounded.

  Instead of the plain helm of a Border fighter, he wore a far more ornate one, which masked him half-face. It was badly battered, and there had been a clumsy attempt, even as there had been to repair his cloak, to restore it. Its form was that of a hawk, or a falcon rather, and the right wing had been riveted back into place so that it hung slightly askew.